Free Essays - A Clockwork Orange :: Clockwork Orange Essays

  Clockwork Orange   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   by   Ã‚   Anthony Burgess   This novel is short–only being about 180 pages–but looks may deceive you, or in other words don’t judge a book buy its cover or its thickness. A Clockwork Orange is actually 360 pages because you have to read between the lines. You may think that the story’s theme is that the future will be filled with horrible decadent violence (that is what I first thought), but if you read between the lines you will understand that this book is written for one main purpose, a purpose other than entertainment.   Ã‚     A Clockwork Orange was written in 1962,   story about the future which was meant to be around 1995 to 2000 (a car used in the story called a 95' Durango). A boy about seventeen, Alex the narrator and main character living in London, rampages about with his â€Å"droogs† (friends) raping, stealing, beating and even killing people. Alex one day is caught for murder and jailed but two years later he is luckily freed twelve years before his sentence ends to take advantage of a new treatment for violent people like him that he volunteered for. He goes through the therapy and succeeds and returns back to civilization. He now becomes sick when he is about to commit a violent or sexual, but also when the Ninth Symphony by Beethoven plays (a minor defect from the treatment). Alex is driven to attempt suicide from this defect because he is locked within a chamber playing this song and does not accomplish his task. He is hospitalized and returns to his â€Å"ultra-violent† self while the inhumane treatment does not work because it does not even give people a choice about being violent.   While Alex helps to present the theme, two different outcomes are formed. First, Alex goes through a great change from being â€Å"ultra- violent† to becoming Lamb-chop and then back to being â€Å"ultra-violent†. Second, the theme defines the major conflict of the story. Although the conflict does not have to do with Alex directly, he helps to illustrate it. The conflict is not solved in the book and will probably never be solved, but it does bring up for debate what Anthony Burgess thinks about right or wrong, regarding   the controversial situation of a cycle of violence. â€Å"Violence makes Violence,† is what was once said to Alex by   P. R. Deltoid, his teacher from school before he went to prison. This book brings up . What do we do to someone who has committed a violent crime? Do we punish them with more violence, for instance death, or do